


the night will go on

by ohgod



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgod/pseuds/ohgod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako is sheltered, Herc is old, Raleigh doesn't want to know about any of this, and Tendo is a perpetual asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the night will go on

Raleigh had fallen asleep on Mako’s shoulder. His nose twitched every time her hair brushed his mouth or eyelashes, but she couldn’t help laughing! How could she? “Tendo,” She called, because after the fifth tiny glass of whatever clear grain alcohol someone had been illicitly distilling -- after the fifth glass of it and the first minute after the end of the world, rank had fallen away. “Tendo, what _is_ Herc singing?”

“I’m not butchering it that badly, girl, shit. The chorus, uh. Boom boom boom boom, I wan you in my room. We’ll spend the night togever, togever an forever, boom boom BOOM boom,” Herc chanted, squinting at the monitor: “Oi, Jesus, these Gtube lyric vids are shit, Tendo!”

“Hey, don’t look at me. You all,” Tendo peeled off another tab and stuck it on the underside of his tongue, “Didn’t wanna go to an actual karaoke bar.”

“Well, ain’t like they’d have anything I’d know there!” Herc gave up and hung the headset back on a lever. Good thing Marshall Hansen had clocked out in time to miss the control center being completely rewired. Tendo had closed a few circuits here, reassigned a few monitors there, Newt had scampered off and returned with a growler full of something clear and wicked and a sheet of pinks (Tendo commandeered those right quick), and they had their very own karaoke bunker.

Missing a few singers, though, but then he had his lap full of stinking drooling dog, and Herc shoved at Max’s face with a hoarse laugh.

Mako, still giggling, finally woke Raleigh up. He peered around, with an expression not unlike a naked turtle. The left side of his hair stuck straight up: “Whassat?”

“You missed Herc singing a really silly song,” She whispered, conspiratorially.

“That song was everywhere when I’d just enlisted, nineteen years old. Everywhere, go around humming it, get the looks from old ladies at the Safeway. Feckin kids, right, Maxy?”

Raleigh, slow from sleep, groused: “How many Kaiju someone gotta kill before they’re not a kid to ya, sir,” and Mako tensed, but thankfully, horribly, Tendo broke the evening’s newest rule.

“Newt, stop hoarding the snacks!”

Karaoke, Newt had clamored, jingling his left hand. Mako hadn’t understood why his pinkie and thumb were extended, but -- well, there were many things about Newt no one understood. He had made her take the shot glass, from the chipped collection of mugs and thermoses; now, drunker than she’d ever been, lips buzzing, she was grateful, and she was grateful he never slept and played horseshoes with greasy pizza boxes and had saved at least some of her family.

Raleigh glanced over at him too, fondly, as she tucked a piece of blue hair behind her ear.

Oh, but the rule!

So it had been Newt’s idea, karaoke, with Tendo’s enthusiastic second. With the promise of heavy drinking and the delay of grief, everyone else had fallen in.

And so had Dr. Gottlieb, miraculously. Newt had offered his arm, fidgeting only slightly, had just thrust it against Dr. Gottlieb’s left side and gone very still as he began to yell about absolutely nothing. Dr. Gottlieb had linked their bodies and murmured something, and Newt shocked (she had seen a kitten, once, jump and twist off a table from the sound of Max’s bark), and the resulting nosebleed had turned their high-low conversation into tsking and careful presses of Kleenex and pale pink handkerchiefs.

Since then, they had sat, never not touching but not talking. Newt had carefully propped Dr. Gottlieb’s leg with their coats, and Dr. Gottlieb tried a Twinkie and pronounced it an abomination, and Newt cheered and Dr. Gottlieb politely clapped any time anyone sang, but there was a current between them so deep and tender it seemed an enormous violation to look directly at it, them.

So, the rule: do not disturb the doctors, for what is seen can never be unseen.

Raleigh grunted, “You got popcorn right there, Ten.”

“He’s got all the sugar, though,” Tendo snickered, slightly.

Newt threw the base’s last box of poptarts into his face: “Fine, take everything I love from me. Not enough just killing my rogue. Do you know how long it took me to make her character sheet? You’re the one who wanted me to play!”

Dr. Gottlieb lounged back against a CPU, and Newt leaned with him, unconsciously, pouting and then belching into the crook of his elbow. Mako saw Dr. Gottlieb wrinkle his nose but calculate, stumped, and she offered, “It’s their DnD campaign, Dr. Gottlieb.”

“I see. Thank you, Miss Mako, for reminding me that I work with a literal child -- ”

“Who the fuck casts an ancient ominous scroll without _reading it first_!” Tendo hollered back.

“Well, like, my intelligence was way too low for me to make a successful roll decoding some old-as-balls heebie-jeebies, so, you know, fortune favors the brave, but asshole muns fuckin don’t. Prashti didn’t die!”

“How many times have we all gone over this? Prashti played out maybe three solo games with me. Tee ell, dee arr, Elwyn is immune to blood magic!”

“Tee ell, dee arr, giving your fuck buddy game-breaking immunities so she’ll keep boning you is, is, game-breaking!” Newt waved a fist in the air.

Herc collapsed into howling laughter, which Max eagerly joined.

Raleigh blinked a few times, one eye falling shut again. Mako tried to smooth his hair, giggling into his ear, and he grinned a little, bumped their foreheads lightly: “Look, wake me up if we ever go sing, right?”

“Sing, yeah, Gottlieb,” Tendo whooped, “You’re up.”

Dr. Gottlieb froze, another pinch of Twinkie en route to his mouth, and he blushed as pink as the tabs. “Oh, I -- I’m afraid I’m nowhere near -- I simply couldn’t. I can’t.” He put the pseudo-pastry into his mouth, as if good etiquette would stop Tendo.

“What happens in LOCCENT stays in LOCCENT, man, c’mon. You heard me, you heard Herc’s stylings, fair’s fair,” Tendo wedged half a poptart in his mouth. Herc grumbled against the spray of wet crumbs and grumbled more as Max licked them out of his hair.

Mako nearly volunteered herself and Raleigh. Dr. Gottlieb was luminously flushed, stammering apologies, and a tremor jerked down his right side. Newt winced, but Tendo just got louder and louder, until

“Look, my turn. My idea, my turn. Lay off, Tendo, okay? Dr. Gottlieb’s the reason we’re all here right now, I mean,” Newt hopped to his feet, wobbled. Dr. Gottlieb reached up simultaneously to steady him, and their fingers touched.

Mako crossed her arms, only slightly satisfied, as Tendo realized with a grimace how badly he had broken the rule.

“Like, yeah, I’m a fucking badass, but Herm,” Newt drifted away from him, hesitantly, and Dr. Gottlieb looked sharper, thinner, as the rest of his department tapped on a keyboard absently, “We haven’t even told you guys, our end of it, but he fixed my programming, like, surprise? Nah, this is the dude who basically built the Jaeger interface, hello. No idea why I didn’t just _ask_ him to help. Guess I was going old-school, recess, pull on his hair some more or put a Kaiju spore down his collar, maybe he’d notice I like-liked him and think he’s, like, the greatest mind of our generation.”

“I’m sorry,” Tendo whispered, pocketing the last few poptarts in retaliation for whatever would come next.

Dr. Gottlieb’s ears were a wine color, but he was pursing his lips against a smile.

Raleigh watched from between his fingers.

“Anyhow, if Hermie hadn’t done that, I’d be fried, the football team wouldn’t have known about the DNA lock, and we’d all be dead, so -- if the dude doesn’t wanna sing crappy pop songs, you know, let up?” Newt tucked the earpiece in, tapped the mic and pushed a button on the holographic screen.

Mako narrowed her eyes against the mash of guitars: “I don’t know this one, either.”

Dr. Gottlieb valiantly examined the half-eaten Twinkie, turning it over in his trembling fingers, while Newt sang. He could sing, actually. Herc blinked, “Damn, he wasn’t kidding about the rock star thing, huh?”

Newt wasn’t glancing back to the screen, as the first lyrics flashed: “All the, small things. True care, truth brings. I’ll take -- one lift, your ride, best trip.” He rocked high onto his toes and back onto his heels, craning through the blue glow, at Dr. Gottlieb.

Dr. Gottlieb ate another morsel of Twinkie and brushed off his lap.

“He’s good,” Raleigh admitted, a hand still over his eyes.

Tendo shrugged, morosely, mouth full of poptart: “I’b so sorry.”

“Always, I know, you’ll be at _our_ show. Watching, waiting, commiserating,” Newt bit his lower lip, bouncing and tugging at his tie now.

Mako was reminded of sparring matches, her head swiveling to assess one combatant, then the other. Dr. Gottlieb cleared his throat, pouring himself a half-mug of the moonshine.

“Say it ain’t so, I will not go. Turn the lights off, carry me home?” Newt’s voice cracked, and he ripped off the headset. “Nanana, whatever, Herm, _c’mon_ , I’m like serenading you, right now, right here, we don’t have to wait any shit -- late night, come home. Work sucks, I know. He left me roses by the stairs -- ”

“Dr. Geiszler, I’m not sure the word _serenade_ could be applied to whatever indecency we now masquerade as pop music,” Dr. Gottlieb rose, leaning on his cane. He thumped over to the screen, and somehow Newt was cornered between the desk and a chair.

Raleigh buried his face into Mako’s lap, Herc pulled Max’s belly over his face. Tendo and Mako, with the bond of survivors, nodded at one another. “I’m sorry,” He said again, just under the roar of _that song is like twenty years old, Hermann, it’s not exactly contemporary, but you live under, like, a rock because you’re afraid to get a sunburn, you know, but you sometimes get them when you’re out in the sun, and you don’t die, I mean, we’re all gonna get roughed up at some point or other, and I’d let you, okay, whoa, I didn’t mean it that way, except I totally did, but, uh_.

“You must forgive yourself,” She intoned solemnly, “Before anybody else can.”

“Sgonna be a long time,” Tendo sighed.

Dr. Gottlieb barked something abruptly in German and caught Newt’s chin between two fingers. More audibly, he snapped: “Schnauze,” and Newt yelped, eyes wide, “Make me,” and they were kissing.

They were really, really kissing, Dr. Gottlieb’s knuckles white on his cane and Newt’s hand coming down on them, curling around them, and the song chanted while they shivered into each other.

“Wait, this is _awesome_ , I totally just made two hundred dollars!” Tendo riffed on an invisible guitar, as the song blazed to an end.

There was more muted German from Dr. Gottlieb, as he broke for air.

Newt nearly split his face open, on his grin: “Told you, you’d like karaoke.”

 

("Mein Kleiner?"

“Go fuck yourself, Ten.”

“You’re just mad because you thought you’d never have to pay out!”

“Excuse me, Chief Choi, was there a betting pool on this event occurring?”

“Uh. No. Nope.”

“I’ve been here what, like, a week? Mako told me, like, two days in there’s a betting pool on you guys getting together, there’s a betting pool on who, you know, goes where, there’s a betting pool on marriage, kids -- you guys are the entire fucking underworld of the Hong Kong Shatterdome.”

“I did, and there are.”

“Marshall Hansen, you would not have been involved in said betting pools?”

“Haha, wh-what betting pools?”

“All right, lemme help. Together, I’m _definitely_ a bottom, I mean, I can strap up and go for it, or whatever, not like, uh, just because I’ve got a cock on means I’m topping, but I could physically top, but tonight and, like, forever I’d _mmmmmff_!”

“Okay, now I’m sorry again.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Ruthlessly ripped from Lord Byron's Bloomers @ Tumblr's [post](http://lordbyronsbloomers.tumblr.com/post/56883687895/so-what-if-after-the-apocalypse-is-canceled) about post-apocalyptic karaoke. I changed the songs up, to adjust for when people were growing up, their interests and/or what they'd have commonly heard.
> 
> POV jumps around a smidge in the beginning. w/e
> 
> Here is ["Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llyiQ4I-mcQ), and here is ["All the Small Things."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ht5RZpzPqw) Because no one appreciates Limp Wrist at karaoke.


End file.
